The Christmas when I was thirteen, the big deal was that I had the big “O Holy Night” solo at Christmas Eve mass. First verse and everything. In a fair world, the first verse would have gone to Nancy Calhoun; she had the sweeter voice, more of a natural talent. I’d been practicing for weeks and could still only hit the high note on “divine” without my voice cracking about 75% of the time. Nancy had been given the second verse, and at choir practice, she hit that high “Noel” without flinching, every single time. Anyone with functioning ears could hear how much better she was, and her solo only got sung if the communion line stretched out long enough to accommodate it, making it the lesser solo. Our choir director, however, was a dramatic white-haired woman who believed in the persuasiveness of a powerful performance. Nancy was a timid, hesitant child; I was loud and precocious, more comfortable the more eyes there were on me. Nancy had enough talent to really make something of herself as a singer someday, but had the ability to sing the line, “Fall on your knees,” with a forceful command that I’d spend the rest of my teenage years using to get former altar boys to do just that.
I wouldn’t have called myself a child that Christmas. I hadn’t believed in Santa Claus since I was five. My brothers were much older than I was, my parents were tired, and Santa had received a half-hearted attempt that would have only fooled a much more naïve and trusting child. My parents never even tried to convince me that mall Santas were real, I knew that the dirty paw print “signatures” on my thank you notes from Santa were from my dog, and not from reindeer (who have hooves, not paws, dad), and I certainly knew that the giant cardboard box with a picture of a dollhouse on it in my garage was not “a box of my brothers’ old clothes.” If I’d been unsure, when I received said dollhouse, with the note, “From Santa,” on Christmas morning, it sealed the deal. I didn’t ask for toys anymore, no stuffed animals, no new clothes or accessories for dolls. It seemed like once I’d started thinking about boys, my sexual fantasies used up any ounce of imagination I possessed, and the magic I’d used to be able to conjure, sitting on my bedroom floor whispering to little animal figurines had run completely dry.
Truthfully, I was nervous because I didn’t know what that meant for Christmas. Christmas was the one time of year when I could count on my family to get things right. Christmas Eves had seen violence, thrown food, and threats of permanent estrangement. A battleground of male egos that my mother tried to appease. If I defended my middle brother, the usual object of my father’s ire, it only made things worse. If I didn’t, I felt myself both a traitor and a coward. Still, every year, no matter what was said, what was screamed, what was thrown on Christmas Eve, Christmas morning found all four of the adult members of my family watching with rapt attention as I opened present after present after present, Catholic enough to understand that a child is the holiest thing on Christmas. Then, we’d dig into endless batches of pancakes, the one morning of the year that my father made breakfast instead of my mother. Christmas evening would find our dog and me lying side by side, with our heads under the Christmas tree, staring up into a cosmos of twinkling lights and artificial pine. Relatives would have arrived and feasted, and all of the real adults would be far enough into their cups not to mind if either of my brothers were, too. I’d listen to “Fairy Tale of New York” playing on the radio, and feel loved and safe.
I wasn’t sure what was going to happen in a year with no toys to assemble. Months before Christmas, before I’d considered the chaos I might be causing, I’d asked for nothing but thong underwear and push-up bras for Christmas. My mother bought them all, sighing over my father’s objections, “What difference does it make? Who will see them?”
Her progressive attitude did not extend towards my dress for Christmas Eve mass. Red, velvet, and covered in tiny silver stars, I’d never seen anything lovelier. My father had taken me shopping for my mother’s Christmas present, and, since I found the dress in the children’s department, and it was on sale, he didn’t even make me try it on before buying it. “She can’t wear THAT to mass!” my mother had gasped, eyes popping, when I came down the stairs in it, several hours before the aforementioned event.
“What’s wrong with it?” my father asked, barely looking up from his newspaper to glance in my direction. I shared his confusion. I knew from the frequent fights my mother and I had while clothing shopping that a skirt could be too short, a slit could be too high, a neckline could be too low, and that it would unleash a legion of demons if any part of my midriff was showing in the house of the Lord. But this was a little girl’s dress, cap-sleeved, shin-length, no deep necklines or high leg slits. It was also unlined, unstructured, and exactly my size. The problem wasn’t the dress; it was that in it, you could see every curve of my body. My father, even staring directly at me, could see only what any decent grown man would see, a skinny half-formed child in a red velvet dress that he’d have bought a thousand times over because of what a bargain it was. My mother, a middle school teacher, with a keener eye, has visions of twelve-year-old altar boys dropping candles and incense, of fifteen-year-old Lectors stuttering while recounting the Nativity story. If I hadn’t been dead set on wearing the dress before, her reaction made me sure I would never wear anything other than that red dress ever again.
“Go and change!” she scolded.
“I don’t have any other dresses,” I lied.
“Then put on a sweater and a pair of nice pants.”
“If your mother says change, then change,” my father added.
I played the last card available to me, and fortunately, it was a good one. Once, at a regular Sunday mass, when I was eleven, I fainted. There had been drama at dinner the night before, I’d eaten nothing but sour green grapes for breakfast, and I was getting my period. Since then, I’d been strategically “fainting” whenever I didn’t feel like standing up there for the full duration of mass. Or whenever I felt that things were particularly boring. The spotlights facing the choir stand were hot, and on Christmas Eve, mothers packed their alto sons into tweed blazers, their soprano daughters into thick wool sweaters and heavy tights. It was a night when even children without my flair for the dramatic were likely to buckle at the knees, standing on those risers for an hour and a half. My mother stared at me, and I knew I had won. My father, who had never seen the issue with the dress, could have cared less.
He cared a good deal, however, that my middle brother had shown up to church, whiskey-breathed, pupils blown wide, personality cocaine large. I didn’t care what made my brother larger than life; I loved watching him perform. It was the only time I could stand not being the center of attention. My father was the only one who seemed annoyed. The church ladies my brother was flirting with were half in love, my mother’s expression was soft, my oldest brother’s only mildly disapproving. As I made my way to the side room where the rest of the children’s choir was assembling, I could hear laughter echoing off the arched ceiling of the church.
Behind the scenes, we ran through a practice round of my solo, a round of Nancy’s, with the reminder that we might not get to hers. I felt smugly certain that tonight would be one of the 75% of times I managed to hit that high note. Before we lined up on the risers that I’d begun to think of as my stage and my stage alone, my best friend Beth’s little sister, Katie, touched me on the arm, “You’re gonna be great,” she whispered, always the bubbly, little optimist. Mass progressed, and after what seemed like hours, my moment finally came. I belted out “fall on your knees” as though I was the angel Gabriel himself…and then on “divine” my voice broke squeakily, loudly, like nails on a chalkboard. I limped my way through the rest of my section numbly before the horror set in. I felt like I was going to burst into tears right there under the spotlights, and to make matters worse, the communion line stretched on for ages, while Nancy Calhoun made it all the way through her verse sounding like she was born to be a little Christmas angel.
I’d been Catholic long enough to know that God was punishing me. For the sin of Pride, for accepting that solo in the first place, when I knew Nancy deserved it so much more, and for wearing that red dress so unapologetically. For Lust for the dress again, but also for asking for all that underwear. For Greed, for hoping that I could have all of those things, but also still have all of the magic that Christmas possessed when I was a child. I knew I had to get off of that altar, and that there was only one way, so I locked my knees up, and down I went.
I wasn’t prepared for quite how loud fainting would be at a Christmas Eve mass, or how embarrassing it would be for your mother to come collect you and frog march you down the center aisle in front of hundreds of eyes, to where your family was sitting. By the time she nestled me in tightly between her and drug-happy brother, wrapped in her soft brown leather coat, my sinfully beautiful dress no longer on display, the tears were flowing freely. My brother, always knowing the right thing to say, leaned close enough to my ear so that just I could hear him and whispered, “Way to go, you ruined Christmas!” and I started to laugh, loudly enough to draw a disapproving scowl from my father.
Mass ended and hundreds upon hundreds of congregants poured out onto a cold, dark street, salt in the air, stars in the clear sky. Beth’s family stopped us, and Beth said, “You did really good!” cheerfully.
“Really?” I sneered.
“Well,” said Katie, ever cheerful, “You did good enough.”
At dinner, after mass, my brother was still holding court, and my father, out of the public eye, was no longer able to bite his tongue. “Always the comedian,” he snapped. “But your act is getting pretty old, don’t you think?”
“Please,” my mother said, almost inaudibly, while my oldest brother placed both his hands on the kitchen table, bracing himself to get in between them if he had to…as he had had to before.
“No,” my father continued. “He shows up to mass in whatever state he’s gotten himself into, and then it’s not enough for him to play the clown with everyone around him. He’s gotta get her,” he gestures to me, “all riled up too. It’s enough. When are you gonna grow up?”
“Aw, get off my fucking back,” my brother said. He didn’t say it loudly, like I knew he wanted to. He almost whispered it, like that was the most he could bring himself to do.
“OUT!” my father bellowed. “I want him out! He’s gonna curse at me in my own house, at my own table. Get out!”
“I’m going, old man, fucking relax,” my brother said, getting up and throwing his chair back from the table with force. My oldest brother stood up, too. He looked for a moment like he was going to say something to my father, but then changed his mind and turned his back on him. “I’ll drive you,” was all he said, and then, to my mother. “Sorry, mom.”
“Nice fucking Christmas,” my middle brother said right before he slammed the front door. That’s the phrase our Christmas Eves most frequently ended with. Every single Christmas Eve hadn’t gone the same way, but enough of them had to make it a pattern. It was the first time, though, that I wasn’t sure whether my brother would come back for Christmas Day. Whether my father would let him in, if he did.
I woke up early every morning, but especially early on Christmas mornings. When my brothers lived at home, I would wake my middle brother first, because it would take both of us to wake my oldest brother, who could sleep through an air raid. At thirteen, I was the only one left at home, and I crept downstairs quietly, stopping halfway, unseen, when I heard my father’s voice doing something I’d never heard my father’s voice doing before. He was pleading.
“Please,” he said, “If you don’t come, your sister will be heartbroken. Please…. all right…yes…. I’ll come pick you up.” My father hung up the phone, and I waited a few minutes before walking the rest of the way down the staircase.
When he saw me, he smiled softly, “Want to go for a ride?” he said. I nodded.
We picked my brother up outside the bar that he lived above, the one he bartended at. He was wearing the same clothes he had on when he left Christmas Eve, and he still smelled like whiskey, but he was quieter. When he got into the car, he leaned back and kissed me on the forehead. “Fairytale of New York” started playing on the radio, and all at once the meaning of the song hit me like a ton of bricks.
Christmas is love, it says. Not perfect love, not love that hits the high notes, or shows up sober. Not love that can control its temper, or let you wear a dress you love without a fight. Not love that never needs to apologize, not love that never needs to beg. But it’s good love. Better than good. Good enough.
